[81alum]

I would really like to know, in more detail, what it is that drove our players away.  From many years of watching Kate in chalk talks it was always clear that she was not exactly a "people-person."  In fact she snapped at me once when I asked what I thought was an innocent question.  But she has good qualities too.  Extremely bright, hard working, very competitive, and she understood the Stanford experience better than anyone else could.  And there was this--as bad as Kate was with people, she did get better, and she was always more outgoing than Tara ever was.  So I had high hopes for her.  The last few years of chalk talks showed her developing a better PR skill set, for example.

So what on earth went wrong?  If we want to understand how to fix what is broken, we need to know how it broke.  Was there genuine abuse of some sort?  Was she just overly demanding and harsh for today's generation of players?  Did she lose their basketball respect?  Was it disagreements about player utilization?  Or did our players just decide that being on a more competitive team was more important than the Stanford connection?

All that said, I do think the underlying structural problems are probably insurmountable  if our standard is to compete as we did in the prior era.  But clearly there is more going on than that.  It would help to know what specifically made the players decide as they did if we are trying to figure out a better coaching fit for our program.

EDIT:  and if you want a great "people person" to lead the program, it is absolutely obvious to the chalk talk fans who that would be:  Tempie.  Also a good recruiter.  I don't know if our players liked her and if she was part of the problem, though.  Nor does she have the resume that many on this board would expect to see.  But she is not exactly a Tara protege the way Kate or Katy or Erica or Jeanette--all former players--were.  She and Heather are the most "outside" on the staff, and she is by far and away the best communicator.

[81alum]

I would really like to know, in more detail, what it is that drove our players away.  From many years of watching Kate in chalk talks it was always clear that she was not exactly a "people-person."  In fact she snapped at me once when I asked what I thought was an innocent question.  But she has good qualities too.  Extremely bright, hard working, very competitive, and she understood the Stanford experience better than anyone else could.  And there was this--as bad as Kate was with people, she did get better, and she was always more outgoing than Tara ever was.  So I had high hopes for her.  The last few years of chalk talks showed her developing a better PR skill set, for example.

So what on earth went wrong?  If we want to understand how to fix what is broken, we need to know how it broke.  Was there genuine abuse of some sort?  Was she just overly demanding and harsh for today's generation of players?  Did she lose their basketball respect?  Was it disagreements about player utilization?  Or did our players just decide that being on a more competitive team was more important than the Stanford connection?

All that said, I do think the underlying structural problems are probably insurmountable  if our standard is to compete as we did in the prior era.  But clearly there is more going on than that.  It would help to know what specifically made the players decide as they did if we are trying to figure out a better coaching fit for our program.

EDIT:  and if you want a great "people person" to lead the program, it is absolutely obvious to the chalk talk fans who that would be:  Tempie.  Also a good recruiter.  I don't know if our players liked her and if she was part of the problem, though.  Nor does she have the resume that many on this board would expect to see.  But she is not exactly a Tara protege the way Kate or Katy or Erica or Jeanette--all former players--were.  She and Heather are the most "outside" on the staff, and she is by far and away the best communicator.